The Dragon Treads the Polluted Path: Political Dilemmas before the Chinese Communist Party.

Environmental integrity can be a critical factor for political stability. China, the world's second largest economy and largest manufacturing nation, is a fit case for such investigation. China achieved an annual average GDP growth rate of 9.7% between 1979 and 2009, and 10.5% per year between 2001 and 2010. The impressive growth, however, brought in its trail environmental degradation, especially pollution, which spawned respiratory diseases and threatened life expectancy, apart from forming “cancer villages.” This paper examines and evaluates the criticality and magnitude of the political implications of environmental pollution for the Chinese Community Party (CCP) by taking mass protests and dilemmatic issues into account, as well as offering a critique of the CCP's green growth strategy. The paper concludes that in the activism-social-media-charged atmosphere, trust building between state and society is essential, especially by launching proactive crackdown on pollution and communicating the genuineness of anti-pollution efforts to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]